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Samsung claims Apple jury foreman LIED to get REVENGE
Wants a whole new trial
Samsung has filed a new, unredacted version of its motion requesting a new trial in its $1bn patent dispute with Apple, revealing allegations that the jury foreman in the original trial engaged in serious misconduct that prejudiced the verdict.
Attorneys for the South Korean mobile maker originally filed the motion in September with some sections blacked out, but Judge Lucy Koh rejected its request to keep those portions sealed from public view.
In the new version filed on Tuesday and revealed by Groklaw, Samsung's attorneys claim that jury foreman Velvin Hogan "failed to answer truthfully" when asked to disclose whether he had been involved in any lawsuits. He mentioned one, the lawyers say, but he failed to disclose two others.
In one of those undisclosed lawsuits, Hogan was sued for breach of contract by Seagate, his former employer. Samsung's motion suggests that case didn't go well for Hogan, noting that he filed for bankruptcy six months later.
Why is that significant? According to Samsung, the South Korean company has "a significant strategic relationship" with Seagate. Samsung is in fact the hard drive maker's largest shareholder, having sold off its own HDD business to Seagate in 2011 in a deal valued at $1.375bn.
Curiouser and curiouser: the attorney who represented Seagate when it sued Hogan is the husband of a partner in the law firm Quinn Emmanuel – the same firm that represented Samsung in its dispute with Apple.
Given those relationships, Samsung says the fact that Hogan stayed mum about his legal history with Seagate is nothing if not fishy. "Mr. Hogan's failure to disclose the Seagate suit raises issues of bias that Samsung should have been allowed to explore in questioning," its motion reads.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Hogan said that on the contrary, Samsung "had every opportunity" to question him. What's more, he said, the potential jurors were only instructed to disclose lawsuits they had been involved with in the last 10 years, meaning Seagate's 1993 suit against him was too old to mention.
"Had I been asked an open-ended question with no time constraint, of course I would've disclosed that," Hogan said.
But according to a transcript of the jury selection process published earlier by Groklaw, Judge Koh never mentioned any 10-year limit when she questioned prospective jurors in Apple v Samsung, asking only, "Have you or a family member or someone very close to you ever been involved in a lawsuit, either as a plaintiff, a defendant, or as a witness?"
Samsung's motion goes on to mention other statements Hogan made to the media as further evidence of his alleged bias. In an August interview with Bloomberg TV, Hogan said he was "very grateful to have been part of this case," and he later called it "the high spot of [his] career" and even his life – all comments that Samsung interprets to mean he had a personal motivation to be on the jury.
Hogan denies that this is the case, telling Bloomberg, "I'm willing to go in front of the judge to tell her that I had no intention of being on this jury, let alone withholding anything that would've allowed me to be excused."
Yet Samsung claims Hogan's self-admitted feelings about the trial indicate otherwise. During jury selection, it notes, when asked if he had "strong feelings or strong opinions about either the United States patent system or intellectual property laws," Hogan said nothing. But in an interview following the verdict, he told Reuters that he didn't think companies should be allowed to infringe intellectual property and that he "wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist."
Samsung's motion also points out that in other interviews, Hogan admitted to giving instructions to other members of the jury on matters of patent law based on his own experience – instructions that Samsung claims were "incorrect and extraneous" and "had no place in the jury room."
"For all of these reasons," the motion states, "Mr. Hogan's conduct ... must be fully examined in a hearing with all jurors and can be cured only by a grant of new trial."
Judge Koh may rule on the matter as early as December, when a hearing has been scheduled on various issues and motions related to the case. ®